Finally off the road…

I was in fabulous metropolitan Morrow, GA this week. I noted, while down there, that The South has a certain look to it, that I can’t quite peg. No, it’s not the presence of Waffle House’s, either. I think it’s flat landscape coupled with a certain type of tree coupled with the presence of water towers (as you don’t really see water towers in CA for the most part). It’s not a bad place, I imagine, just very different from anyplace I’ve been.

The trip was good, but we hit a snag on the ride back – we were late leaving Atlanta, apparently due to “maintenance issues”. Said issues turned out to be an AC fan that was vibrating. The couldn’t fix it, so the decided to just not run the fan during the flight. This took 45 minutes. This is the part of the conversation where I remind you that our layover at O’Hare was 50 minutes. The flight crew said that if we could load the plane and be seated in 20 minutes, we’ll make all of our connections. Thus a slow, crawling chaos ensued that took 30 minutes. This was when I noted that – as a society – we’ve lost our ability to navigate spatial relations. I say this because people were carrying on bags that – when empty – were larger than the required dimensions of carry on baggage. Of course, when stuffed with clothes and moonpies and whatnot, they tend to bulge out. Now, they’re trying to stuff these into the overhead compartments. Years ago, Dennis Miller did a bit about people trying to cram mattresses into the overheads with hydraulic rams…that seemed to be an appropriate analogy. Another thing – one guy – from La Crosse, WI, I might add – put his bag in and it clearly stuck out. I mean, even the most delusional schizophrenic could tell it would not fit. But him? Nope – just slid it in and walked away. It makes me wonder about this self-importance that has propagated throughout society. Yes, I know that bags cost $30 to check and yes that sucks. I know it takes a bit long to wait for your bag at the carousel. I also appreciate the danger of baggage being delayed or lost . Get a smaller bag, and don’t pack so much, then – there are ways to wash clothes on the road. But don’t delay an entire planeload of people because you don’t want to be inconvenienced.

Needless to say, we missed the connection to SJC; in fact, the gate was closing as one of us was running up. The good news was that we got to stay at the airport Hilton instead of the Cheesy-8 Suites, and got home at a decent hour yesterday.

Exercise-wise, it was a decent week. As predicted, I ran on Monday and Friday (both days I was home this week), in addition to doing 3 mi on the treadmill on Tuesday. I stopped at 3 mi, because I was bored to death – but at least I got a run in. All in all, I got just over 25 miles in, Friday to Friday.

Tomorrow is going to be interesting as Droo and I are going for a long ride (ostensibly training for the Tour de Cure in June). I’ve already ridden 39 miles before and did OK, but I think tomorrow will be somewhere between 35 and 50. It’s going to be interesting, to say the least. Should also be pretty as it’s going to wind through Portola Valley and such – don’t really know the loop as Droo’s leading. More on that later…